Aspies For Freedom

Could possibly relate to us (depending on whether or not we have more than our fair share of microcephalin and ASPM):

Human brain is still evolving, scientists report

By Ronald Kotulak

Chicago Tribune


CHICAGO - Could you use more brainpower?

Nature apparently thinks you can, according to two University of Chicago studies providing the first scientific evidence that the human brain is still evolving, a process that may ultimately increase people's capacity to grow smarter.

Two key brain-building genes, which underwent dramatic changes in the past that coincided with huge leaps in human intellectual development, are still undergoing rapid mutations, evolution's way of selecting for new beneficial traits, Bruce Lahn and his University of Chicago colleagues report in today's issue of Science.

The researchers found that not everyone has these genes, but evolutionary pressures are causing them to increase in the population at an unprecedented rate. Lahn's group is also trying to determine just how smart these genes may have made humans.

One of the mutated genes, called microcephalin, began its swift spread among human ancestors about 37,000 years ago, a period marked by a creative explosion in music, art, religious expression and tool-making.

The other gene, ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associated) arose only about 5,800 years ago, right around the time of writing and the first civilization in Mesopotamia, which dates to 7000 B.C.

"People have this sense that as 21st century humans, we've gotten as high as we're going to go," said Greg Wray, director of Duke University's center for evolutionary genomics. "But we're not played out as a species. We're still evolving and these studies are a pretty good example of that."

Other experts called the Chicago studies "stunning," but said that while the two genes appear to make people smarter by helping to engineer bigger brains, there are many more genes involved in brain building and human intelligence and cognition.

"These aren't going to be the only genes and these aren't going to be the only changes. We don't even really know exactly what these changes mean, but it's a glimpse into the future of our understanding of how the human brain came to be and function the way it does," Wray said.


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ONLINE:Science, http://www.sciencemag.org

I guess this stuff could be relevant to autism as I believe that microcephaly and macrocephaly are two conditions that are associated with autism, as well as unusual head growth patterns.

Anyone who thinks that human evolution finished with industrialisation is a fool. The kinds of selection pressures operating now might be a lot different from the ones that were in play during pre-historic times or earlier, but I don't see why that is any reason to suppose that human cognitive evolution has stopped.

All I have to say to this nonsense is: Where these pseudo-scientists there to observe these changes 37,000 and 5,800 years ago, or how do they 'know' these things? All this is, is pure speculation and has nothing to do with science.

I think the scientists probably figure out how old gene mutations are by checking how the genes are distributed in present populations. For example, an old mutation would be spread throughout all human races, while a fairly recent mutation would be expected to have a more limited geographical spread. I read about an interesting gene that is apparently only found in Europe, thought to possible be a remnant Neandterthal gene. I've also read stuff about dating mitochondrial genes, but there have been disutes amongst scientists about the methods used.